Kraken's Alex Wennberg calls out TikTok community for 'vile comments' about family

Seattle Kraken forward Alex Wennberg has spoken out after his wife shared an Instagram post criticizing the "BookTok" TikTok community for sexually harassing the NHL veteran.

Spurred by a highly charged post by influential "BookTok" personality Kierra Lewis, Wennberg shared his discomfort with the behaviour and language used amongst the community.

“As someone who’s been media trained my whole career, I’ve been taught to bite my tongue and to leave it instead of making a statement,” Wennberg’s statement read via a post to his Instagram story. “But it has gone too far for me to stay quiet when people post vile comments on my wife’s instagram and on photos of our child.

“I’m all for the BookTok community to write books and fiction about hockey, but the aggressive language about real life players is too much.”

The post on Instagram follows a post from Wennberg’s wife Felica Weeren from just a few days prior, directly calling out the community for their behaviour on the platform towards the Kraken forward.

“While I’m all for female empowerment and especially around sex, there have been videos and comments made that have crossed the line of what it means to fancy someone and when it actually sounds pretty predatory and [exploitative],” Weeren said in part in her statement. “What doesn’t sit with me is when your desires come with sexual harassment, inappropriate comments, and the fact that with the internet, we can normalize behaviour that would never be ok if we flipped the genders around.”

The Kraken’s relationship with the "BookTok" community had been an ongoing theme over this past season, with the club at one point even flying out Lewis and presenting her with a customized BookTok jersey.

As the team continued to fan the flames, however, the subcommunity of fans reportedly began growing more crass, going as far as to directly message players, as Wennberg and Weeren outlined in their statements.